Responsibility
by Kirby77DP77
Summary: Woody would do anything for his friends, anything. Pairing if you squint, but if you don't like the pairing it won't ruin the story.


**_I don't own Toy Story, Toy Story 2, or Toy Story 3._**

_Responsibility_

* * *

Woody took his jobs very seriously.

He was Andy's favorite toy. He was Woody the cowboy straight from _Woody's Roundup _that loved to stop criminals in an imagination wound playtime. He was anything that Andy wanted him to be; the victim or the savior, but in the end it was always ruled by Andy's choices.

However, on the other side of the coin was Woody's choice of appointing himself leader of the rest of Andy's toys. This job he took more seriously than his role as a toy for his owner, because this job, this role, gave him that handed responsibilities to him. And those responsibilities came on swift wings with dire consequences.

He doesn't organize the toys for moving day, now he has left toys behind to a cold, empty house. Woody and the rest of the group never see them again. Woody doesn't enforce the long hated battery day every other month, now he has toys in a comatose state. They don't work, and could be potentially chucked out into the garbage. He doesn't keep an eye out for yard sales, birthdays, Christmases, or Easters, and now nobody hides the injured or old toys. They get sold or thrown out into the bitter existence of garbage day. If he forgets _**one meager thing**_, the fragile existence of being a happy group flourishing in Andy's room is shattered. He is then doubted by the group, fights break out, and toys are broken more and more.

His job isn't getting any easier, but the age old burden hangs on the shoulders of the worn cowboy doll, and he will fulfill the roll until his very end.

Little did the sheriff know that his duty as leader, his role as a toy to Andy, and his life would be threatened all at the same time.

* * *

"There's a snake in my boot!"

Woody resisted a pained twitch as the crazed child Andy had invited over pulled his string again, none too gently. This twelve year old was playing much rougher than Andy had ever done with them- more like Sid, actually. This kid made Woody reenact bombings as the victim, he threw him across the room, and that creepy kid had even taken Woody's hat and thrown it onto the highest shelf in the room.

But that wasn't all that this kid had done. With his shadowy eyes and crooked expression of evil, this little punk had gone so far as to bully Andy around as the owner entered the room. Tripping the poor owner of the toys and laughing as Andy's cowboy hat fell off of his head when he hit the ground.

However, Andy had a secret weapon. With salty tears pouring down his face, he ran downstairs screaming, "Mom! Stan hurt me!"

The kid, Stan, reacted, horrified as he ran after Andy, "Whatever he says is a lie!"

And as soon as the visitor had exited the room, Woody let out a groan as he propped himself up into a seated position. Everything hurt, it was worse than the Sid incident. His voice box that had been more used in the past few minutes than his entire life ached slightly. His limbs throbbed from being dangled by each one of them, and his seams were ripped and torn in places that he didn't even know he had seams, like his midsection that was now leaking stuffing all over the room.

And speaking of the room, where was everyone?

Woody looked around until his gaze fell onto the toy box as he instantly remembered his orders for them to hide, him then being the last one to get in after he pushed Buzz in before him, had never made it. Stan ended up grabbing his limp body and torturing him.

"It is safe guys," Woody coughed to clear his throat, "come on out."

Toys instantly flooded out of the box, conversing among each other near the toy box until Buzz spotted Woody all the way across the room. The space ranger was at his side in an instant, helping to support him in his staying in an upright sitting position of the wood floor. Cerulean blue eyes looked at the cowboy with concern as Woody winced when he asked him if he had a needle and thread to spare, since the cowboy had lost the spare he kept in his empty gun holster during Stan's 'playtime'.

Buzz, with his strong plastic arm still holding up Woody, turned to Mrs. Potato Head who strangely enough, had an extra.

"Thanks," Woody gave his best friend a small pained smile as he stitched himself up with a practiced ease, only wincing quietly as he pulled the thread through to tighten the newly made seam.

Looking up at Buzz after he was finished, Woody grinned at the look of horror on his friend's face at the wound on the cowboy. Still smirking in an attempt to lighten the mood, Woody said, "Well, we can't all be plastic, now can we?"

But the space ranger was too worried to be amused by Woody today. He had never seen his friend with such pain wracking his slim body, or with such a bad injury. Really, an arm was one thing, but that rip practically tore Woody in half!

SLAM!

The toys went limp instantly as the door banged open, knocking a giant hole in the wall in the shape of a door knob. In the door frame, however, stood the tall intimidating figure of Stan.

The kid ran back to the spot in the room that held the cowboy doll that he had left, and surprisingly-

"A Buzz Lightyear?" Stan picked the plastic toy up and tried to break his arms off him in his grimy hands for a moment before failing and saying, "Ooh, a challenge are we? Well, I suppose I'll just have to blow you up at home!"

At Stan's words, fury pulsed through Woody. _**No one, no one was going to hurt his best friend**_. And so, with a heavy push to any and all rational thought, Woody brought up a plan he hadn't used in a few years.

Keeping his face as still as stone, Woody willed his voice box to do the work for him. "Reach for the sky!" He screeched the words from the voice box in his chest.

Stan jumped slightly before setting Buzz down to pick up the cowboy, mumbling how he must have stepped on him or something to make it have gone defective.

"No, Stan," Woody smirked inwardly, "you didn't break me. You only made me angry."

The boy gasped and dropped Woody in shock as he stared at the unmoving doll with wide, surprised eyes. "How do you know my name? How can you talk? You're just a toy!" Stan screamed.

On the floor, with a crazed look in his eyes Woody made his head tilt slowly and mechanically to his left and the spun his head all the way around saying without unfreezing his expression, "I know _**all**_ of the bad children, Stan. I come after them, and _**I get them**_."

The human was frozen in shock now, hyperventilating in panic, mumbling under his breath, "Not real, not real!"

But Woody was on a roll now, no sympathy left for this kid. "Oh, I'm quite real Stan." Woody said, but then he suddenly had completely changed to his lifelike, moving self as he asked as he showed his sharp canine teeth, "How do you want to die?"

"OH MY GOD! COUSIN SID WAS RIGHT!" Stan bolted out of the room screaming and raving about a crazed toy, running down the stairs and out of the house, almost breaking down the front door in the process.

Woody groaned as Stan left. Okay, now he was really hurting. That fall from about five feet gave him more trouble than he thought it would after the adrenaline wore off. He was getting too old for this…

"Woody? Are you all right?" He looked up in surprise. He hadn't seen Buzz come over. The space ranger was kneeling at his side with eyes filled with worry and a slight amount of awe.

The cowboy just gave a half hearted nod in reply as he gripped his head to chase the stars that had invaded his vision, and tried to sit up when a wave of nausea and light headedness sent the sheriff over the brink. Blackness overwhelmed him, and Woody fell unconscious.

* * *

"Is he allowed to do that?"

"Is Woody okay?"

"Where the heck did that come from?"

"Is he dead?"

"He can't be dead! Who will make us burritos on Mexican night?"

"What are we going to do without him?"

"Who is going to be leader now-"

Questions upon questions were thrown at the space ranger as he walked through the crowd of toys. They just kept piggy backing off of one's ridiculous conception to another stupid comment!

Suddenly, Buzz exploded all of his emotions out in one barked command, "TOY BOX! NOW!" The toys scrambled in fear to the box before slamming the lid down hastily.

Probably not the best way to handle them, but at least it gave the ranger some peace and quiet.

So, with Woody in his arms (bridal style), Buzz carefully scaled the bed post that the sheriff had so easily navigated hours before. Without knocking Woody's unhatted head against the unforgiving wood, the space man laid his comrade on the springy mattress with care.

Bouncing slightly, Buzz sat down beside him, concern filling his eyes. That was a _**lot**_ of energy Woody used today. If the sheriff was being run on batteries, they definitely would have run out. After all, just throwing off the toy instinct took a lot out of him not counting the 'playtime' he had endured with Stan before!

And Woody had saved him…. Again.

Stan would have definitely taken him home and strapped an all too familiar weight to his back to be launched, just as Sid had done years earlier. Buzz shivered. He really didn't want to go through that without Woody there to help.

But the cowboy had done it again, and Buzz had not failed to see how angry Woody was this time. It wasn't just about teaching the kid a lesson, no… Woody had been out to scare the living daylights out of Stan.

He never knew Woody to be so protective of him…

_But then again_, Buzz thought grimly as he placed his thick plastic hand on the sheriff's slim one, _I suppose __**it is**__ his job. _

_

* * *

__**So… Any thoughts? I am slightly addicted to Toy Story at the moment for some reason… :D**_

_**kirby**_


End file.
